


In a yellow wood

by Deputychairman



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, POV Female Character, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 04:10:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2607998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Those first few weeks, he thinks about it a lot. What might have happened.</p>
<p>Sometimes at night, staring up at the ceiling with Victoria’s slow even breathing beside him. Mostly he sleeps fine - he is, he discovers, a perfectly ordinary, even stereotypical, male in this respect. After sex, he sleeps, and they are having a lot of sex. At least, it seems a lot to him. </p>
<p>But they move around a lot. In new places, sometimes, he lies awake, unsettled by traffic, the brakes on a city bus, a dog barking, old plumbing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a yellow wood

 

Those first few weeks, he thinks about it a lot. What might have happened.

Sometimes at night, staring up at the ceiling with Victoria’s slow even breathing beside him. Mostly he sleeps fine - he is, he discovers, a perfectly ordinary, even stereotypical, male in this respect. After sex, he sleeps, and they are having a lot of sex. At least, it seems a lot to him.

But they move around a lot. In new places, sometimes, he lies awake, unsettled by traffic, the brakes on a city bus, a dog barking, old plumbing.

On nights like that he thinks, what if he’d been slower, or if he’d hesitated a second longer before starting to run. Or what if the bullet which pinged off the door had hit her - hell, it might have hit _him_. He was the one on the step

He thinks, that first 24 hours, he could still plausibly have changed his mind. Arrested her, hauled her off to the nearest police station, history repeating itself.  Physically, there was no doubt he could have done it. He knows her strength intimately now, and she couldn’t fight him off if he was really determined.

But he learned a long time ago that the winner in any fight isn’t usually the strongest man, it’s the most determined one.

 

He isn’t as determined as he used to be.

 

His father appears while they’re travelling. When Victoria is in the shower, or in the line for coffee, he appears at Ben’s shoulder. Never in uniform, like he realises that isn’t going to work. Ben’s not going to regret his choices because of the damn Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

He says as much.

“Well dad, the fact that you’re here to have this conversation with me is because, if you remember, you were _shot_ and _killed_ by a member of the RCMP, and your murder ignored by your fellow officers!”

“Yes, well. Mustn’t let one rotten apple spoil the barrel.”

“I’m not letting it! I didn’t let it!!” he hisses. “I found the guy who did it, and ruined my career bringing him to justice, so don’t talk to me about rotten apples!”

“Now, Benton -”

“Stop calling me _Benton_. Nobody else calls me _Benton_!”

And well, the truth of that is that there’s nobody around but Victoria who knows his name at all. Even Staff Sergeant Meers, who all but told the Chicago Police Department to arrest him, had called him _Ben_ while he did it. He doesn’t think about any of the names people called him in Chicago that weren’t his father’s formal, disapproving _Benton_. _Fraz-ier. Benny. The Mountie._ That was some other guy. Some other life.

“I know what it’s like to fall head over heels in love, son. But that doesn’t mean you have to leave all your responsibilities behind, you know. What about your partner, eh? What about him?”

But that’s the one question he can’t answer.

 

When the visits stop, he doesn’t know what to feel. Relieved, because perhaps this is an indication that his mental state is now closer to what is considered normal? The rest of his life isn’t normal. No longer seeing apparitions of his dead father can only be a _good_ thing.

 

* * *

 

More than the moment she heard gunshots from inside the bank and knew it had gone wrong, more than when it hit her Ben was going to turn her in; more than when her sentence was handed down, Victoria thinks about the train.

 

No, first she thinks about the car. Kissing him and kicking him out onto the street instead of shooting him. You can’t ever go back from shooting someone, she knows that now. She did it once when her life depended on it - and her life _did_ depend on it - but with Ben looking at her like it was killing him, like he was _sad_ he couldn’t go with her, she couldn’t do it. She kicked him out, literally, and calls it done. He can’t catch her car.

But then, but then. Everything that ever happened between the two of them is impossible, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t the laws of physics bend for them? None of the other laws would, or he wouldn’t bend them, which comes down to the same thing.

But at the train station, he does bend them. Calling out to him, seeing him start to run, she can’t quite believe her eyes. The moment he catches up, grabs the rail and swings himself up into her arms, that’s the real turning point. That’s the point of no return.

She did her ten years, and now he’s running away from his whole life.

 

The train is rocking and he’s shaking, she’s shaking, what have they done? she holds on to him and he clings to her. He’s breathing hard, and when she looks at him he’s wide-eyed, on the edge of panic or euphoria.

“I think I’ve just left my whole life behind,” he says, and then he laughs. Yes, there it is, the edge of hysteria. He reaches up to his own head and she doesn’t know what the gesture means until he adds, “My hat fell off.”

“I didn’t like it anyway.” She hasn’t even thought about it until the words are out of her mouth, but it's true.

“Didn’t you?” he pants.

“No.”

She’s pulling him away from the open door without knowing where they’re going, and he follows. He’s following her now. She ought to be thinking cooly, how to get them away, but she can’t, _he came with her_ , they’re even now and he came with her, all she wants is to touch him, anchor herself and touch him.

He lets her push him against the cold partition between the train cars and they’re standing there swaying with the increasing motion of the train, kissing. Breathless and not thinking, right there where anyone could see them, _will_ see them, but even if she only has ten minutes of this it will be worth it.

 

That turns out to be the right thing to do. Because who would ever link the couple making out between the cars with gunshots on the platform? They don’t look like fugitives: they look like they’re in love. They look like they’re here because they can’t keep their hands off each other, not because the police are after them. If both things just happen to be true, well, most people are quicker to think _sex_ than they are to think _crime_.

 

The train guard clears his throat behind them.

“Sir, ma’am, I sure am sorry to interrupt here, but I need to see your tickets please...”

They break apart. Ben’s arm is still tight round her waist; two of her fingers are tucked inside his shirt. They look guilty, they _are_ guilty, of making out in a public train car, that’s all.

Victoria’s blushing and smiling, hoping the bruise on her face doesn’t show. Ben dips his head, gives a lopsided grin, holds her close.

She holds out her ticket as Ben begins:

“I’m terribly sorry, I’m afraid I don’t have a ticket. I hadn’t planned on coming, you see, I acted on impulse - we haven’t -  we hadn’t seen each other for - If there’s any way you could let me buy a ticket now, I would...” he’d be the very picture of a blushing bride, if that even existed for men.

“...he wasn’t supposed to come. Work. But then at the last minute…” she picks up, leans into him, puts everything she’s feeling into it. It’s close enough to true, after all. He smiles down at her, looks back at the guard.

She can see the moment the man decides, _look at them. They’re in love. Am I gonna be the asshole who ruins their day?_ He smiles at them. On their side. He was in love like this once. Wasn’t everyone, once?

And she sees it now: this is how they will do it. All vanity aside, she knows they’re a beautiful couple. Not everyone can keep their looks after 10 years in prison, but she has. Mostly she doesn’t want to be charming, but when she sets her mind to it, it will get them a long way. And Ben, Ben’s beautiful alright, and he’s charming without even trying. Even when he’s trying not to be.

Or maybe she’s just susceptible.

“Well just this once, sir...”

The guard is taking Ben’s money, making out a ticket to God knows where, they have to get off long before they get that far anyway. But when the police ask, he will remember that’s where they were going. If he links the good-looking lovers with the armed fugitives in the first place.

And it seems he doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

They end up in Dodge City. Ben’s always wanted to go there, and now here he is. It doesn’t live up to its John Wayne promise, but then he knew that. He knew that, and is disappointed anyway.

They find the cheapest motel in town, and sleep like stones after so many nights in train cars and buses.

He wakes up to Victoria straddling him, her hair brushing his shoulders, making a curtain against the world. Pleasure ambushes him, still half asleep - he can’t pace himself, step back from the bright edge of orgasm. All he can do is let her ride him, his hips helplessly rocking up into her, and he comes so fast and so hard he sees stars. He’s mortified even as he clutches her against him, riding the wave of it. She doesn’t seem to care about his stamina. She pulls him to her as he slides his hand between her legs where she’s wet from him, curls down to take one nipple into his mouth as she gasps and moves against him.

When hunger drives them out of bed, they stumble into a diner across the street. He feels drunk on sensation, on her body and how she tastes and smells. All he can think about is sex, he wants to be touching her _all the time._ Nothing else matters.

 

Except it does, obviously. They don’t have any money. Enough for breakfast, a couple more nights in a motel, and then what?

He has money in the bank, in Canada. He hasn’t checked how much is there recently, but it’s something close to ten thousand dollars. Not that it matters - he has no way to access it. He can’t walk into a bank, show a driver’s licence, and walk out with a smile from the teller and his own savings.

She has a criminal record, $100 dollars and a bag of diamonds on a railway platform back in Chicago. They’re a long way from Chicago now. 

 

They read the local paper, already coffee-stained. A story about a business foreclosing, bank loans called in, people lamenting the loss to the neighbourhood. Another about a father of four sentenced for stealing from the insurance brokers where he worked as a clerk. To pay medical bills, the defence said.

 

Victoria leans back in the booth, raises her chin in a gesture he has come to recognise if not interpret.

“Didn’t that ever piss you off about being a cop, seeing a company like that which has everything, and people who have nothing? And if some guy with nothing steals from them, you have to arrest _him?_ ”

His jaw clenches. “Yes,” he says. His voice is hoarse.

She wipes her fingers carefully. “Well, now you don’t have to any more.”

“No. I guess I don’t.”

 

It was always going to come to this, or something like it. He hadn’t thought it through when he started to run, but what was he going to do? Settle down and get a job, support her in the style to which she had never become accustomed, while they wait for the police to catch up with them? Hardly.

 

* * *

 

Of course Ben’s never done this before, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him.

 

He’s calm, he knows who he’s after and how much he can take him for. No bullshit posturing: he only says it if he’ll do it. He left one guy unconscious at the door, two more bleeding on the floor: that lends some weight to what he says. Maybe it isn’t so different from what he used to do - to arrest a guy like this, you have to walk right up to him and not show fear, and Ben’s the sort of cop who really wouldn’t shoot first and ask questions later. _Was_ the sort of cop, she corrects mentally. He’s most definitely not a cop any more.

She thought he’d recoil from the violence when it came down to it, that she’d need to be the one to pull the gun if there were people around. But he throws one swift punch and suddenly she sees what his strength can do: the guy at the door goes down and he doesn’t get up again.

Victoria’s there because she insisted, but he doesn’t need her. Ben’s _got_ this. He lets her hold him down, but he can knock a man out cold without breaking a sweat.

She used to be able to tell when guys are showing off because you’re watching. She thinks Ben maybe is, just a little, because he looks over at her once and licks his lips like he does when he wants her but isn’t going to ask.

She can’t take her eyes off him.

Ben Fraser, the obedient Mountie who turned her in because it was his duty, is holding a gang leader at gunpoint and stealing his drugs money. Ben’s standing tall and at ease, his eyes bright, totally in control of the situation, and she wants him _so much_ it’s all she can do not to grab him by the scruff of the neck. She isn’t any help at all here: she’s not watching out for anybody coming, she’s just staring at Ben. How can he be so in control, so tough, so sure of himself here, the same man who lets her pull his hair and looks up at her like he’ll do anything she says?

Ben doesn’t lose his focus though. This isn’t kids messing about for who’ll get to juvie first: if he screws this up, they’re both dead. But the gun never wavers. Ben catches the bag, walks out backwards and locks the door from the outside. He grins at her, bright and brittle, and his hands are shaking.

 

Victoria takes him straight back to the motel.

 

She pushes him through the door - he doesn’t need pushing, but she likes the way his eyes go hot and dark when she does it - and into bed. He goes down hard and lies panting up at her. He can’t turn her in now. He can’t leave her. He’s committed to this, to them - that’s what it feels like.

She only pulls off enough of their clothes to let her ride him. He gasps when she slides down on him, then bites his lip and rocks with her, hands steady on her hips, holding on and holding on and holding on until she comes bright and fast, clenching around the thick length of him. He makes a desperate, needy sound, clutching her to him and the pulsing of his cock inside her sets off another wave of pleasure that leaves her breathless.

He’s hers, he’s hers now, and she won’t give him back.

 

* * *

 

They stumble out of bed to pay the bill, and then stand in the parking lot blinking at each other as the sun sets. For a moment it’s as if neither of them know what to do next, never expected to pull it off and have a future to fill.

But they do, and they can’t stay here.

“Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” he says.

Victoria gapes at him for a second, as if she can’t believe he’s holding a bag of stolen money and quoting John Wayne Westerns at her, and then she’s laughing so hard she can hardly stand up. It’s partly hysteria, he can see that, but there’s still something deeply gratifying about making her laugh like that. He puts his free arm round her shoulders, feels hers come around his waist, inside his jacket. She’s still laughing into his shoulder.He swings the bag, kisses the top of her head, and feels _glorious_.

“Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” she echoes. “God, I love you, Ben.”

 

They get the hell out of Dodge.

Ben steals the car. He’d already chosen it: new Mercedes, at a drive through, where the driver yelled and swore at the kid who got his order wrong. Calling her _dumb slut_ and _little bitch_ and Ben got up, interrupted the tirade as the girl began to cry.

“Sir I couldn’t help overhearing. I’m sure there must be some way we can…”

“Fuck you, buddy,” the guy spat at him and drove off with a squeal of tires.

 

He remembered the plate, when he saw the car again.

 

And now, he’s driving it hotwired out of town. Some of his skills are more transferable than others.

***

They’re in Amarillo, Texas when it starts to get dark. The hotel they stop at is a world away from the motels he’s started to get used to. The room is big, the bed is soft, the walls are thick. There’s a bar.

“Wanna celebrate?” Victoria asks. “We could get champagne...”

Her smile says she’s teasing, but something about her voice says she really wants it. Well, God knows the last ten years haven’t brought her a lot of champagne in nice hotels. This is something she can have.

“I don’t drink,” he says, but he’s smiling. She must know he means _anything you want._

All the clichés are true: her eyes are sparkling, she’s so beautiful right now it’s as if she _glows._ He’ll give her anything.

“That was before,” she points out, taking a step towards him.

Something about that strikes him as very profound.

“So it was,” he concedes.

Why shouldn’t he have a drink? Before, it had always been in the back of his mind like a drum beat: _what would happen, what would happen if I just let go_ … And now it’s happened. His life is changed beyond all recognition, but the rest of the world is still standing. _Maybe not Ray Vecchio's world_ , he stops himself thinking. His worst mistakes are irrevocably committed and left behind in Chicago. A drink isn’t going to change anything about that.

 

Champagne strikes him as very, very good. Before today, he’s done no more than take a sip at a classmate’s wedding, wet his lips at a consular event. He and Victoria have a bottle between them, and she’s holding his hand and smiling at him across the table, before coming to sit beside him in the booth.

He buries his face in her hair, pulls her close. Everything is perfect: Victoria is in his arms, kissing his neck, whispering, “Ben…” low and intimate, the way nobody has ever said his name before. Nobody knows who they are in this bar, they have a room upstairs with 30 thousand dollars in the safe. Nobody got shot, nobody followed them. They got away with it.

“Ben,” she says again. His thumb is tracing circles around her nipple, where no one can see. It pebbles under his touch, and she arches against him. He can’t take his hands off her. “Ben, let’s go upstairs…”

She slides out of the booth and he stumbles after her, trusting her to find their room, their key. All he can think about is how much he wants her.

 

It must be the alcohol, that keeps him on the edge. He’s right there, teetering on the brink of coming for so long, wild with the pleasure of her body moving against his, her soft gasps in his ear, and when she comes with his fingers on her and his cock inside her, crying out as she writhes and fists the sheets, pussy hot and wet and contracting around him, that his orgasm when it hits seems to carry him away. It goes on and on, stronger than anything he’s ever felt (only later does he think, _the competition wasn’t all that stiff, was it Benton?_ ).

 

* * *

 

In Albuquerque Ben is quiet, startles easily. Keeps looking over his shoulder every time a dog barks or a car drives too fast.

Is he getting cold feet, having second thoughts about what they did? It occurs to her she doesn’t know him well enough to tell. He seemed fine with it, but now he’s had time to think.

 

“We need to be less conspicuous,” he says out of nowhere.

They _aren’t_ conspicuous. Their clothes are entirely ordinary, they’re driving an ‘89 Ford. In public they are quiet. Maybe he means the touching: her hands always seem to be on him, as if she’s showing ownership. Perhaps he doesn’t like it.

“How should we do that?”

He clears his throat, looks at the floor then back up at her.

“Maybe, change our appearance. Hair..:”

“Have you secretly always wanted to be blond, Ben? I can dye your hair if that’s what you want.” She stands over him where he’s sitting on the bed, sinks both hands into his hair like she’s his stylist.

He quirks a smile and lets his eyes close for a second.

“Ah, no, I don’t think - I think that would look terrible, actually. And not at all inconspicuous,” he says.

 

She cocks her head, waiting.

 

“But when I was looking for you, in Chicago, people remembered your hair. I think it’s beautiful, but people notice…”

“Ok,” she says slowly. “So what are you suggesting? That I cut it all off?”

“No!” He reaches for her. “No, I just thought you could - braid it or something.”

Victoria narrows her eyes at him. She’s angry and she doesn’t know why. He isn’t _telling_ her to do it, he’s suggesting it, and it isn’t such an outrageous idea. This has been his life’s work, after all. Making enquiries, tracking down people who are trying not to be found. He ought to know what stands out and gets you noticed.

“I hate braiding it,” she can hear the petulance in her voice but she can’t call it back. She _does_ hate braiding it, but most of all she hates him for bringing it up, making his _reasonable_ fucking suggestions. She didn’t spend ten years in an orange jumpsuit for him to tell her how she ought to look now.

“Oh,” he’s surprised. “Well, let me do it for you. And if you think I should dye mine, then I place myself entirely in your hands…”

“Go on then,” she challenges, turning abruptly in his arms so her back is to him, flicking curls over her shoulder like she wants to take an eye out.

 

At first he’s hesitant. Her displeasure must be obvious in the set of her shoulders, but he doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. Neither does she, really. 

When he’s done, he says, “There. Have you got a - ” and she doesn’t give him the word. He can braid hair, it won’t emasculate him to admit he knows the vocabulary. “A ribbon or something to tie it? I have some string, but -”

Maybe he’s trying to make her laugh, but it’s not _funny_ , he’s mocking her. She jerks away, and for a split second his hand is still in her hair. She feels the tug before he realises she’s serious and lets go, and that’s as much provocation as she needs.

 

She wheels around and slaps him, hard.

 

She doesn’t want to hurt him except in the way she does, and he’s still sitting there, mouth open in shock, hands raised. There’s a height you hold your hands when you want to defend yourself and there’s a height you hold your hands when you’re saying, _sorry, sorry_. There’s no doubt which one this is.

“Victoria, I didn’t mean to…” he begins.

“Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that.”

“I’m sorry.” He drops his hands. He’s breathing fast, licks his lips and raises his chin. Just a tiny bit, so if she wasn’t watching him as close as she is she wouldn’t have seen it.

 

She wants to hit him again. Wants it so bad she feels her jaw clench and her teeth grind. And he’s asking her to do it, sitting there with the face that says, _hurt me, I want you to, I deserve it._

 

She doesn’t hit him again. She fists both hands in his shirt and he’s just limp, passive - he’s so much stronger than she is and he lets her shake him. Hard. Looking up into her eyes.

And then she’s pushing him back on the bed and he’s reaching up for her, his arms are around her (not so tight she couldn’t get away, never like that) and they’re kissing hot and frantic and the air has sparks she’s so hot for him. She can feel him hard in his jeans already, he’s trying to rub against her but she won’t let him. she lifts up, pressing him down with all her weight on her hands, holding him down. And he lets her. Goes still and lets her as she pants down at him.

“You _did_ deserve it,” she whispers.

“I know,” he murmurs back, as the braid comes loose about her face.

 

* * *

 

He writes to Ray, once. He buys plain paper and some envelopes, as if there were a range of people he should be writing to, and tries to explain everything, to apologise, to tell Ray how he _feels,_ wanting him to understand.

Then he hesitates. He can’t ask Ray to forgive him - Ray _shouldn’t_ forgive him. What he did to Ray, to Ray’s family - it’s unforgivable. If there was some possibility of reply it would be fairer, to at least let Ray rage at him like he deserves. But to just drop his feelings and his apologies at Ray’s feet, as if assuming he is forgiven - no. Ben writes another, better letter. Maybe not so much better. He writes Ray’s address on the envelope as a sign of faith that Ray still has the house, and puts it carefully in his jacket pocket. For a few days the crinkle of paper when he moves makes him think constantly, troublingly, of Ray. Then it softens in contact with him, and after a while he forgets it is there.

 

* * *

 

Near the Arizona border, she buys another gun. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Ben - against all her better judgement, she does: blindly, absolutely. It just seems safer to have one each, in case they need them.

A man in a bar strikes up conversation, but they can both tell he isn’t just being friendly and the offer comes out soon enough. They drink beer together, the three of them, and right from the start Ben is suspicious. Oh, he’s polite enough: small talk turns out to be another one of his unlikely skills, like jumping a moving train and hotwiring a car in 30 seconds flat. But she can tell he isn’t comfortable with this. Well, too bad. _You’ve made your bed so you’ll lie in it_ , she hears in her mother’s voice. She wonders if Ben hears something similar.

The place is dark and stinks of old cigarette smoke, and Ben is chatting to a bootleg gun seller about the weather. If Victoria was the one selling, she wouldn’t sell to Ben - she’d peg him for a cop, right away. At least, she thinks she would. Not that knowing he was a cop helped her ten years ago. She still read him all wrong. Maybe other people do too. Maybe everybody does.

She wants the gun but she doesn’t intervene as Ben talks. Mainly she’s just listening, head on her hand, nodding along - a woman driving this deal would attract attention. Ben glances at her often, checking in, and she smiles and agrees and doesn’t stop him.

At first she’s sure he’s going to blow it, but however much he screams _law enforcement_ to her, it seems he strikes their seller as a stand-up guy, someone he can trust to give him a fair price for his merchandise and not attract attention shooting up a liquor store with it. On which points he is perfectly correct, of course.

Ben gets the pistol for two hundred bucks. They shake hands and finish their beers, conclude the sale in the parking lot. It’s as easy as buying pot.

 

When she’s driving them away, pistol in her purse and carefully sticking to the speed limit, Ben asks,

“Why did we need another gun?”

She glances at him once then keeps her eyes on the road.

“Because we both need one. Don’t we?”

Out of the corner of her eye she sees him tip his head back against the headrest and rub his eyebrow.

“...being an American, I also know where my strength lies, and that's in being as heavily armed as possible at all times,” he murmurs like he’s quoting something.

“What?”

He waves it off. “Nothing. Something someone said to me once...”

She keeps driving.

 

They cross the state line just after midnight, and see three police cruisers, sirens wailing, speeding back the way they’ve come. Ben flinches, but Victoria keeps going. Her foot steady on the gas, not looking back. 

When she glances in the rearview mirror they’re already out of sight.

 

* * *

 

Warm sounds good right now, she’d said, so they drift south. No rush, nowhere in mind, but every time they move on, they head south. West some, too, but always south.

Ben thinks, in Chicago he felt out of place, but it wasn’t for the reason he thought.  Now the more Spanish they hear, the warmer the air feels at night, the more at ease he is. The names of the beers change, the specials on the menus are things he’s never eaten before. Now he can see and hear and smell that everything is different. He’s not in the Northwest Territories, he’s not in Canada, and on a clear day you most definitely cannot see Canada across the lake, not even if you squint.

There is no lake; there are big lazy rivers rolling south, with iron bridges you can see the water through. As they bear further west, the water gives way to dry river beds and dust, terrain that barely knows rain and has never seen snow. There’s no mistaking anything about these places for anywhere he’s been before. He doesn’t feel like he _ought_ to know how things are done.

Two countries separated by the same language: the quote refers to the United States and Britain, of course, but it applies just as well to Canada. Maybe he wasn’t too far south before - maybe he hadn’t gone far enough.

 

As far as Ben is concerned, they can keep going south until they run out of land.

 

There’s a little voice in his head saying something about running away from his mistakes, but he doesn’t listen. It’s so obviously true that there’s no point even thinking about it.

 

* * *

 

In Tuscon they rent a house in the desert. Some cities, it’s motels for a few weeks, a job, and moving on, but not here. Here they drive past a crumbling place with peppers growing in the yard and a huge sky overhead, and Ben says:

“Hey, look, peppers! I’ve never seen peppers growing before.”

She knows she isn’t always kind to him (he deserves it, he doesn’t want her to be kind to him), but sometimes it’s easy to give him something he wants.

They pay cash, and the landlord doesn’t ask any questions.

 

They buy groceries and cook dinner together. Fuck a lot. Something about the heat makes them both want it more.  At least, she does, and Ben always seems to be standing very close. He responds if she so much as looks at him. It’s intoxicating, the power she has over him.

A police car goes by once. It stops just past the house for a minute, then drives on. It doesn’t come back.

 

There’s no one around for miles and Ben seems to relax in the isolation. Sits shirtless in the yard, sprawled on an ancient sunlounger full of dust and spiders. He’s got a new hat from somewhere, to keep the sun out of his face. It’s not like the one he used to wear. She doesn’t know if there’s a name for it, but it looks like a cowboy hat to her. It blends in, round here. She used to think blending in was going to be a problem.

The sitting doesn’t last long: he unearths some garden tools, starts tending the plants. Some he cuts back, some he pins up; he keeps the birds off the peppers and digs out the weeds that were choking something with flowers, until there’s a kitchen garden where there used to be a wilderness. She isn’t sure if she’s happy about that or not.

She watches him work, and that’s a nice view alright. Not worth ten years of her life, but nice.

 

He watches her too. At first she thought he didn’t trust her, was watching to check she hadn’t pulled a gun or called the cops. Which she still might, she tells herself, except she knows it’s an empty threat. Better the devil you know. He screwed her life up worse than any of the losers she was with before, but he’ll never raise his hand to her.  He’s so desperate to make it up to her that he’s probably the safest man in the world for her right now. Maybe he doesn’t bring out the best in her - nor she in him, obviously - but it’s not like anyone else did better.

In Tuscon she wears cheap sundresses and little shorts, and he watches her even more. It takes until then for her to realise that the watching isn’t about trust at all, it’s about sex. It’s like he never saw a woman close up before, or never let himself look.

 

“Ben,” she begins, as he leans there against the wall, still shirtless, watching her chop vegetables. “Did you ever live with anyone before?”

He licks his lips and shakes his head.

“How d’you like it so far?”

He’s watching the knife in her hands. She tosses her hair over her shoulder, adjusts her stance so he can see how low her dress is cut in the front. It’s not just the knife he’s looking at.

“Very much,” he says, coming to lean on the counter right next to her.

“Really? Even doing dishes, and yardwork?”

“I did dishes before,” he points out. He’s trying very hard to only look at her face.

She smiles, and doesn’t think about wiping her fingerprints from everything she touched in his apartment.

“But this isn’t what you imagined, is it Ben? You imagined something nice, something respectable, like your parents…”

He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Not really, no. Why, what did you imagine? What were your parents like?”

“My mom drank, my dad hit her, and then he left,” she said. Thirteen years in one sentence. There isn’t much else to say. “So it’s not like you’re the worst guy I could have picked.”

He nods, and for a moment she’s afraid he’s going to take this _seriously_ , try to talk to her about her _childhood_.

“Well, I’m sure I still have room for improvement,” he says. His voice sounds deeper. She can feel the heat coming off him, turns a little more towards him.

“Yeah, I’ll let you know when there are areas you should work on.” He nods again, like he really would work on whatever she told him.

 

The knife is still in her hand when she closes the gap between them. She’s about to put it down when the sun glints off the blade, and before she’s even thought about it, she is touching the steel against his bare stomach. He takes one breath that’s almost a gasp and goes very very still.

She traces the point so so gently up his stomach, up to his throat. He’s breathing fast, but she doesn’t think he’s scared. When she looks up at him she _knows_ he isn’t. He’s watching her so intently, biting his lower lip, gaze moving from her breasts to her face when she raises her head to meet his eye.

She lets the knife trail back down again, so lightly that it doesn’t break the skin even with the rapid rise and fall of his chest. When it brushes over one hard nipple, he makes a sound that is almost a moan, and when she brings it down to the waistband of his jeans, there’s no hiding how turned on he is. His cock strains against the denim, and his breath catches when the flat of the blade touches it.

She stops with the knife against the button of his jeans. “Take them off, Ben.”

His hands move to obey and his eyes never leave her face. He isn’t even looking at the knife. He knows it’s there, but he’s looking at her.

He knows it’s there as he steps out of his jeans, and then his shorts. She didn’t tell him to, but he always gets what she implies. Victoria touches the blunt edge to his hip and he shivers, hands clenching at his sides.

 

If it was only about what she wanted, she’d put it down now. The rush of holding him at knifepoint is working for her too, she’s wet and desperate for contact, but there’s no mistaking what this is doing to _him_. He’s flushed and hot eyed, breathing hard, and she thinks, _just another minute, just one more minute of him like this. I can do that for him. He thinks he deserves it._

She moves the knife up to touch his other nipple, and she’s so turned on she’s afraid her hands will start shaking. Her own nipples are hard and tight, clearly visible through the cling of her dress. The way he’s looking at her, he must have noticed. He can probably smell her: she can, she can smell the two of them, sex in the air.

“Get in there,” she gestures to the bedroom.

He swallows, nods, then stands there as if he can’t move.

Victoria presses the blade against his ribs and backs him all the way to the bed. His eyes never leave hers and his erection never falters, and when she pushes him he goes down flat on his back like it’s where he belongs.

 

The knife in her hand is the only reason she does it. She never liked giving head: it was what you did when you couldn’t bear to have the guy fuck you. Sweaty hands pulling her hair, thrusting so hard she’d gag, the salt slime of semen in her mouth. She’s never done it with Ben - why would she? She _wants_ to fuck Ben. Every day, all the time, she’s desperate for him. And he’s never asked, never hinted, never pushed down on her head to get her there without having to say the words.

Now she has a knife against his side, she suddenly wants to. She wants to taste him, to lean over him and take him apart with her mouth and her hand.

 

Ben gasps “ _Oh_ ,” in a voice that sounds like surprise when she takes the very tip of his cock into her mouth, and then he groans “Victoria - ”

His hands are fisted in the sheets and she can feel his thigh muscles tremble. He’s keeping so, so still but his breathing is ragged and when she takes him as deep as she can, right to the back of her throat, his hips move like he can’t help it. It’s just dumb reflex that tightens her grip on the knife; she doesn’t mean to touch him with it. He moans, a deep sound of _wanting_ , and this time she’s ready when he rocks the slightest bit into her mouth.

This is everything she wants, he’s spread out for her, knees drawn up, eyes closed, biting his lip but she can still hear him. She wants to keep him like this, _just like this,_ until all of a sudden she doesn’t. She wants it to be good for him, she wants to watch him come, she wants him to open his eyes and smile at her, to know it’s _her._

It only takes a few seconds. She tightens her hand, her lips, and when his cock jerks she pulls away, only the faintest taste of him catching her tongue. It isn’t as bad as she remembered.

Victoria strokes him through it as he writhes and cries out, coming all over her hand and his belly, all the way up to his chest. It’s probably then that she lets go of the knife. She hears it fall off the bed onto the floor, but she’s rapt, watching Ben come, he’s right here and she still wants him so much it’s almost like pain.

 

When he opens his eyes, he smiles at her exactly like she wanted him to. Then he’s reaching out for her, and rolling them over, kissing her mouth and then down her body. She hears herself panting when he reaches her breasts, lips moving on one nipple while his fingers tease the other. He’s always gentle, but he’s learned to do this just hard enough that it’s perfect, it’s driving her crazy, she’s so close but it’s not enough. Before she has to tell him, he stops, and then he’s moving down, he’s - he’s - no, he’s between her legs, kissing her pussy, like her doing this for him means of course he’s allowed, she should stop him, she’s so wet already, she can’t let him do this -

But when she opens her mouth to say _don’t, you don’t have to do that_ , all that comes out is a gasp of pleasure. It’s so _good_ , she never knew, both softer and more intense than his hands or his cock, covering all the places that send sparks through her, that her knees fall open in spite of her and her hand buries itself in his hair.

She tells herself it’s so she can push him away, but her orgasm is building and building and she doesn’t, she just holds on and holds on until she can’t hold on any more and she goes over, calling his name, like she’s being swept away and he’s the only one who can save her.

 

Afterwards he pulls her close and she clings to him. Her legs are still trembling. Ben strokes her back and kisses the top of her head and doesn’t let go.

 

There is blood on the sheets and a vivid cut across Ben’s ribs when she sits up.

 

“Oh God, Ben,” she begins, reaching out to him. He lets her come close, no hesitation. Wraps his arms round her again. “I’m so sorry…”

She seems to say that a lot to him. He nearly always says the same thing back - he’s going to say it now. He’s going to give her that self-deprecating smile that shows his crooked tooth, and say _I probably deserve it_.

But he doesn’t. Not this time. This time he takes a deep breath.

“It’s ok,” he whispers into her hair, so quiet she can barely hear him.  “I - I liked it.”

She has no idea what to say. _I know? You should have stopped me anyway?_ No. Of course she can’t say that.

So she just holds on to him tighter and says nothing. Nothing she can do physically can hurt him unless he lets it. She can hold on as tight as she can, till her arms ache.

 

Then he says, “If we got married, they could never make me testify against you.”

 

* * *

 

The marriage probably isn’t valid. The certificate is in Spanish, and the names on it aren’t theirs. They have ID in those names though, ID good enough to get them across the border. It is Ben and Victoria there at the ceremony, saying the words. So the intention is there, even if the law wouldn’t back them up. But that seems like the theme for everything they do together: good intentions, trouble with the law.

Victoria wears a new dress. It doesn’t look like a wedding dress, because this is a shotgun wedding in a Acapulco municipal building where the ceiling fan squeaks. But it is almost white and she looks very beautiful in it, brown from their months in Tuscon. Ben hasn’t seen it before, and that’s a tradition for wedding dresses too, isn’t it? That the groom shouldn’t see it before the wedding?

They don’t exchange rings, but he’ll get her one. When they find the right place. Diamonds are traditional, portable, almost untraceable. He’ll find her one. (He notices he’s using words like “find”, when what he means is “steal”. It’s a tendency he’ll have to watch.)

They’ve never set eyes on their witnesses before. Both are sitting on the shady side of the main square, and for 20 dollars they follow Ben and Victoria inside and scribble a name where the registrar points. There’s no law saying you have to know your witnesses.

Ben would have offered them more money, but Victoria won’t let him. For 20 dollars they’ll give you half an hour, a smile even, for the odd “Americanos” in a rush to tie the knot, but any more and people might remember them.

She’s right, of course.

 

There’s a police car parked in the square when they come out. One man at the wheel. He watches them until they lose sight of him turning the corner.

They carefully don’t look back, but Ben feels the back of his neck tingling as if the man’s eyes were touching him.

 

* * *

 

When she was very small, Victoria never doubted that she’d get married. Getting married was what girls did. It was how all the movies ended. You’d have a beautiful white dress, flowers, and that was the end. The end of what, she never really asked herself.

By the time she finished elementary school she knew it wasn’t really like that. That was Disney, it was like magic and princesses and the tooth fairy. No one really believed in it, but it made for a good story. She liked stories.

She knows she isn’t really married to Ben. This is a story they’re telling each other. She has her part and he has his, and she is giving it everything she’s got. She likes this story. If the last 20 years hadn’t happened, maybe it wouldn’t just be pretend. Maybe if she’d met a boy like Ben when she was 13 and in highschool, not 23 and on the run, it would all have been different.

Ha. Maybe not.

He used to be a Mountie, and now he’s in a hotel room in Mexico, sliding a stolen diamond onto her finger and murmuring, “I promised I’d get you something…”

If she could bring him down to this, now, washing away all the certainty and experience of his thirties with those three days of reckless sex and declarations, she doesn’t want to think what might have happened if they’d met any sooner. He’s given up his career, his reputation, everything he stood for, all because of her. He probably thinks she doesn’t know what it means, the way he came with her, but she knows. Just because they don’t talk about it doesn’t mean she doesn’t know. How would that conversation even start? _Sorry I screwed up your life? You started it, but now it’s gotten out of hand? I thought you deserved it but now I’m not so sure?_

So she takes the diamond ring. It’s beautiful, it’s the sort of thing she would have chosen for herself, if they’d been the sort of people who went shopping for an engagement ring. If he’d paid for it, it would have cost a fortune. She lets Ben slide it onto her finger, and then she pulls him up from his knees and down onto the bed with her so she can feel his weight on her, his arms around her.

When they fuck she comes with her eyes open, and he’s looking right at her, like he knows her.

 

* * *

 

In La Paz, other men watch her. She’s only crossed the street to buy a newspaper - her Spanish is good, he was surprised to find - and every man in sight turns to stare as she walks back to where he’s sitting in the autumn sun, coffee untouched in front of him.

Is she aware of it? She doesn’t act like she is, but then he knows from personal experience that sometimes the best way to deal with unwanted attention is to pretend you haven’t noticed it.

She doesn’t look around at the staring, and she doesn’t start at the wolf whistle.

 

But Ben stands up. He isn’t going to start anything - at least, he doesn’t think he is - he’s just being polite, standing up to greet a woman. Except he isn’t, really. He’s standing up so they can see that he’s noticed, that he’ll stare back, that he’s taller than nearly everybody here. He isn’t thinking consciously about the fact that he’s armed and knows how to shoot fast, but maybe it shows in the two steps he takes around the table. He ready to finish it if someone else starts.

He doesn’t need to. Victoria smiles and kisses him, and the men turn away. She sits down beside him, orders a coffee, reads the newspaper.

There’s a story about a robbery in Santa Cruz, but she doesn’t read it. She doesn’t need to. They had to get out in a hurry: he doesn’t want to go over it again either.

 

That night Ben lies awake like he hasn’t for months. He can’t stop thinking about the men in the street watching her, how they turned away when they realised she was with him.

He didn’t think he had many illusions about what she wants from him, but this one honestly hadn’t occurred to him before. She’s so utterly, completely, capable that in all these months it never once crossed his mind how conspicuous she might be, alone. How much attention she’d have to deal with. It isn’t just Bolivia - any town in the United States would be the same. She could do it - of course she could. But it would get tiring, wouldn’t it? Much easier to have somebody there who can do it for you.

Well. It’s the least he can do for her.

 

Just as he’s falling asleep, the tail end of something he doesn’t like flickers across his consciousness and makes him turn uneasily in bed. He slides closer to Victoria and she mumbles half a word in her sleep and moulds herself to him.

He was so busy being jealous, he didn’t stop to think that maybe the men today weren’t all looking at her for the reason he thought. He can pick out a police officer at fifty paces in Canada or the USA, but here? Here he’s not so sure.

 

* * *

 

When the end comes, there’s no warning. She hasn’t let herself think about it, and it’s only when it happens that she realises she had expectations. She was counting on there being a warning. Time to tell Ben - something. Say goodbye. Find words to make sense of the mess they’ve gotten each other into and the way part of her doesn’t regret a thing and part of her is shaking her fists at the sky because it’s so fucking unfair it all had to happen like this. Too late before they even met.

 

One minute she’s gazing out across the market square, watching women shop and men drink mate de coca and thinking only about how good the sun feels. The next minute Ben is pulling her up, shoving her bag into her hands,

“We have to go. Right now.”

He’s holding her hand painfully tight, dragging her through the crowd. She’s fighting her own fear, breathless trying to keep up with him.

“Ben, slow down, tell me what happened!”

“We need to get out of here. They found the car. The bus station is this way, we’ve just got to get out of town and we can lose them…”

“Who? Who do we have to lose? We haven’t done anything here, they can’t arrest us!”

He looks over his shoulder at her. He’s pale and wide eyed, jaw rigid. This is what panic looks like on Ben’s face.

“They were searching the car, speaking English. Someone’s here from the States, I didn’t stick around to find out who. If we move fast, we can still make it - there’s a bus at noon.”

“Wait, slow down -” she digs her heels in, yanks at his arm and finally he turns and looks at her properly. “Stop _running_ , you’re attracting attention!”

 

He blinks at her, breathing hard, but he does stop. She takes both his hands.

 

“Ben, we’ve got to be calm, ok? Look at me: calm down, we can do this, we’ll be on that bus. How long have we got?”

He checks his watch without letting go of her hand.

“Half an hour.”

“Right. So we’ll get tickets, act normal. Have they found the hotel?”

“I think so.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. We can buy new things.” She squeezes his hand so he can feel the diamond on her finger. “I’m wearing the ring.”

He manages to smile at that, but his heart isn’t in it.

 

They set off again, walking this time. His grip on her hand never loosens.

 

* * *

 

The bus station is chaos. At first it looks like usual, everyday chaos: people down from the villages with chickens in coops, a contingent of backpackers.

Then he sees them, forming a loose line where people are boarding: local police, scanning the crowd, clearly looking for someone. Maybe that someone isn’t them, maybe this sudden police presence has nothing to do with the American voices searching their car. And maybe he and Victoria will live happily ever after.

He pulls Victoria back out of sight. She’s seen them too, he can see her thinking. He wants her to have a plan, to look at him with that confident smile that says, _you weren’t worried, were you Ben?_ But her hands are as empty as his. Somebody’s onto them, somebody who knows who they are and what they’ve done, and there’s a line of armed men between them and their way out of town.

They turn in sync to head back out the way they came, but now there are two men there too. One in uniform, peering into the tumult of the bus station, and nodding as another man speaks into a headset. He can’t make out the words, but there’s no doubt that they’re in English.

This time it’s Victoria who picks a direction. Her arm is round his waist and she’s leading them towards the cafe, where the backpackers with their babel of languages are taking up half the tables. They pick past dusty rucksacks to find a spot hidden at the bar, where it’s dark. There’s no other way out except on a bus.

 

“They can’t watch everybody - we just need to keep out of sight,” Victoria says, and he loves her for it. She’s going to fight right up until the end.

He shakes his head. “No, look - ” she follows his gaze as a second man with a headset crosses the terminal. He’s holding something that looks like a photograph. “They know who we are. We’ve got to create a distraction, get past those men. They’re the local force so, we’ve got more chance with them  - they’ve got nothing riding on the outcome - "

“No,” she says instantly. Her earrings swing as she shakes her head.

“Yes, Victoria, look - it’s nearly 12 o’clock. If I go out now, they’ll come after me and you can just walk out, be on the bus before they even realise you were here.”

“And then what? I drive away, and then what, Ben?”

 

He has to lie to her. He has to say, _and then I fight off 15 armed men and I run after you, nobody stops me and I catch up with the bus; we keep on going south and south and south, and I love you forever_. But there are tears in her eyes and the lump in his throat won’t let him.

There was always going to be a reckoning for everything they’ve done and everything they’ve not done and everyone he's failed. Now they don’t have to wait for it any longer: it’s right here in front of them.

 

“I can’t get you sent to prison again,” he manages.

“I don’t care!”

“Yes you do,” he says urgently. “Look, there are a lot of people out there. I’ll knock something over, start a fight, they won’t be expecting that, they’re expecting us to run, and I’ll be right behind you, alright? I’ll be right behind you.”

 

She’s wavering. She really does think he can do it, pull off a miracle for them. He caught a speeding train and dodged bullets the last time the police were onto her, leapt into her arms like he could do anything. She believes he can do it again.

He’s going to lose his nerve if he looks at her any longer. His hands don’t want to let go of her. He made love to her this morning and he didn’t know it was the last time. Now his feet are saying _stay, find another way, it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t long enough, we’ve known each other forever but it wasn’t enough. Nobody’s ever known me like you have._  

 

So he kisses her once, lightly, casually, a see-you-in-a-minute kiss, the biggest lie he’s ever told, and walks right back out into the crowd before she can stop him.

 

* * *

 

It happens like he said it would, up to a point.

 

There’s uproar, and she just walks onto the bus like it’s nothing to do with her. Her hands are shaking as men shout and women scream and chickens squawk, and then the engine starts. Even then, she’s waiting for him.

People are still climbing aboard, lashing luggage overhead and squeezing into the last few seats. They don’t seem to care what’s happening in the terminal behind them: it’s a localised uproar, and its ripples don’t even reach the bus. Victoria watches every face that appears in the aisle, and none of them are Ben.

The driver shouts. A woman climbs down, stands on the tarmac waving to someone on board. A girl takes the seat next to Victoria and leans around to carry on talking to the man behind them. There’s a chicken on the bus somewhere, flapping and squawking in its cage, and a child is crying. It smells of coffee and tobacco and people close together.

 

The doors close.

 

Victoria clenches her fists, feeling the diamond dig into her palm, and bites her lip. She won’t cry, she won’t cry, Ben will be here. He’ll be here, he’ll be here, he’ll be here.

She’s still telling herself that when the bus lurches and pulls out with a grinding of gears. As it clears the station she sees a knot of men in uniform gesticulating and shouting, and in the calm eye of the storm stands Benton Fraser with blood on his face. 

 

His hands are cuffed behind his back and he nods ever so slightly, so that only she notices, as their eyes meet.

 

And then the bus turns the corner.

Victoria turns in her seat, and watches as the only person in the whole wide world who ever cared what happened to her disappears from sight, and she doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t cry, and she doesn’t cry.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Fic That Nobody Wants, because Fraser/Victoria isn't anybody's OTP, obviously. It isn't mine either, and the power of Fraser/RayK is so strong, I thought I would never write Fraser het. But then Tumblr planted so many feelings! It is fertile ground for new ideas and old things to cry about! This story mainly happened because of Cicaklah shouting things like #fraser is a subby bitch and I love him#so flustered#so good for me and "Someone must have written the perfect Fraser runs away with Victoria and everything goes Bonnie and Clyde right? The charismatic bank robber and the beautiful impressionable small town cop" and agreeing with me about how Victoria is more wronged than evil and how Fraser did a lot of the wronging and is just looking to get what he deserves, so really what this fic is, this fic is those words left in a warm damp place for 6 weeks until they sprouted into THIS. Fraser gets hella laid and hella broken hearted, and I make myself cry, the end.
> 
> So thank you to Cicaklah for the sustained inspiration, and to Seascribe for moral support and beta services in the face of RL Too Much To Do, and making it better as always.
> 
> (And the title, for anybody feeling short-changed that there were not, in fact, any yellow woods in evidence, is from that Robert Frost poem that everyone knows until I choose half a line out of context:
> 
> **The road not taken**  
>  Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,  
> And sorry I could not travel both  
> And be one traveler, long I stood  
> And looked down one as far as I could  
> To where it bent in the undergrowth...)


End file.
